28 : Press reviews

‘Magnificent, inspiring, informative’

John Le Carre

‘A book of quiet yet overwhelming power delivering a message of devastating moral authority. Moving, heartrending and uplifting, Stephanie Nolen’s book bears impeccable witness to the “unique and savage” phenomenon of AIDS in Africa.'

William Boyd

'This book is both brilliant and enraging, and contains accounts of some extraordinary people doing courageous things to fight the epidemic which go a long way to counter other stories of hopelessness, ignorance and corrupt or inept government ... It is a call to arms to a battle we should all have been fighting for a very long time.'

Observer

'The marvelous gift of Stephanie Nolen's 28 is that it allows the reader a chance to mingle, a chance to hob-nob, with fascinating and eloquent people from across sub-Saharan Africa. Professors and sex-workers, truckers and doctors, old ladies and orphaned children, celebrities and beggars, all raise their voices here. The music of these combined voices is intelligent and pained; it sings to us of suffering, stigma, compassion, courage, and heartrending love.'

Melissa Fay Greene, author of There Is No Me Without You

‘AIDS in Africa is an enigma. The more it spreads, the less we see it. It is deadly yet deniable. It hides in full view of everyone. What this moving book does is to catch it by the tail and show us its face - it is our own.’

Christopher Hope

‘28 can soon be 48, 98 and more. And not just in Africa. And it does not have to be. Nolen shows that the struggle of one to live with dignity must be the struggle of all. Read. Weep. Rage. And above all else – like those people described in this brilliant book – find the courage to do.’

Dr James Orbinski, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Médecins Sans Frontières

‘If a war had killed 20 million soldiers, and left 28 million more dying of wounds, we'd call it the worst such tragedy since World War II. This is the scale of AIDS in Africa. Stephanie Nolen brings this story to life in a moving, deeply human way. Through these portraits – shrewdly chosen, varied, and sometimes startlingly unexpected – she artfully puts a series of human faces on the greatest health crisis of our time.’

Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost and Bury the Chains

‘Probably the best book ever written about AIDS, certainly the best I’ve ever read. I wept when I finished, not just because it’s beautifully written, not just because the last chapter tears the heart out, not just because it’s a work of such force and feeling and power, not just because it’s so intensely and astonishingly human, not just because it covers the entire landscape of the virus, but because its impact could shape public opinion as never before.’

Stephen Lewis, former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa

‘To help us swallow the pill, Nolen’s portraits of amazing people living or working with the virus are readable in a storytelling style that approaches that of Alexander McCall Smith…Nolen’s book has the merit of being a historical record.’

Independent

‘Anecdotal stories about the lives of 28 people living with HIV-Aids are told with powerful sensitivity by journalist Stephanie Nolen. She spent six years with sufferers, putting their lives down on paper in a way that humanises rather than reports…Nolen educates on the disease and treatments, the history of the Aids crisis, and how famine, corruption and war have come to overwhelm the continent.'

Dazed and Confused